Biden Orders Pentagon To Prepare For More Attacks By Iran Proxies
The White House on Monday said Iran was in some cases "actively facilitating" rocket and drone attacks by Iranian-backed proxy groups on US military bases in Iraq and Syria.
The White House on Monday said Iran was in some cases "actively facilitating" rocket and drone attacks by Iranian-backed proxy groups on US military bases in Iraq and Syria.
Speaking about the uptick in Iranian proxy attacks on US forces, White House spokesman John Kirby said that President Biden has directed the Department of Defense to brace for more and respond appropriately.
He reiterated that there had been an uptick in such attacks over the last week, and especially over the last few days, but the US would not allow threats to its interests in the region to "go unchallenged."
He said the United States believed these groups were supported by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and the Iranian government, which was also continuing to support the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.
"We know that Iran is closely monitoring these events, and in some cases, actively facilitating these attacks and spurring on others who may want to exploit the conflict for their own good, or for that of Iran," he said.
There has been an increase in attacks on U.S. forces since the conflict in Israel intensified on October 7 when militants from the Palestinian group Hamas launched a brutal attack on southern Israel.
"We are deeply concerned about the potential for any significant escalation of these attacks in the days ahead," Kirby said.
Biden has sent naval power to the Middle East in the past two weeks, including two aircraft carriers, other warships and about 2,000 Marines.
"We know Iran's goal is to maintain some level of deniability here, but we're not going to allow them to do that," Kirby said. "We also are not going to allow any threat to our interests in the region to go unchallenged."
The roundup of worshippers included 13 children and is part of a weekly system of oppression of the country's Sunni minority who see constant threats of arrest and even state sponsored violence.
The incident happened following last week's Friday prayer in commemoration of the lives lost last year in the Bloody Friday tragedy where state security murdered close to 100 civilians, including women and children.
"After Friday prayers, people should return to their homes with silence and remembrance of the Almighty ... but the extensive presence of forces on the streets surrounding the mosque and prayer ground further agitates the people," he said.
"When the youth see that the authorities have arrived in such numbers, it stirs up emotions ... but if these authorities were not present, there would be no problem."
Bloody Friday initially began with protesting worshippers gathering after a police commander sexually assaulted a young Baluch girl a few weeks earlier and resulted in one of the most bloody days of the uprising which followed the death in morality police custody of Mahsa Amini.
At that time, nationwide anti-regime protests were also taking place, following the death of Mahsa Amini in hijab police custody in mid-September 2022. The protests in Zahedan were seen by the regime as another serious challenge and they acted more brazenly than in Shiite cities, opening direct fire at protesters.
Abdolhamid also stressed that after more than a year, "no proper steps have been taken to heal the pains" of the families of the victims of Bloody Friday. "The greatest pain and distress of the people, whose family members were martyred on that fateful day in Zahedan on the 8th of Mehr, 1401, is that, unfortunately, no proper attention has been given to this matter, and no significant steps have been taken to address their suffering."
Since then, this Sunni-majority city has been a scene of week-round protests, which follow the sermons delivered by their Friday prayer leader, Mowlavi Abdolhamid.
The Sunni cleric stated that worshippers should return home "in silence and remembrance of God after Friday prayer"; however, the presence of security forces around the mosque is likely to exacerbate the situation and "provoke" people.
Videos posted on social media by the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) show special guard forces surrounding the Makki Mosque and significant force used when arresting citizens in the city.
A number of activists and community leaders have expressed their support for the people of Zahedan, including Iran's exiled prince, Reza Pahlavi. He reacted to the incident Friday by blaming the regime for responding to "peaceful chants with a violent crackdown— including against children."
"The regime occupying our country is the godfather of terrorism in the Middle East," he wrote on X. "No Iranian, Israeli, or Arab will be safe as long as this criminal regime is in power. Lasting peace in the Middle East can come sooner than expected if the world takes real action to help the Iranian people overthrow this terrorist empire."
Moreover, Fazl ul-Rahman Kouhi, the Friday prayer Imam of Pashamag village in Sarbaz County, Sistan and Baluchestan, and a number of his companions were arrested by the security forces on Sunday after meeting Abdolhamid in Zahedan.
Kouhi, who was recently released after a long period of imprisonment, had said before his arrest in response to Friday's crackdown on protesters that "the attack of military forces on the worshipers in Zahedan is no less oppressive than the actions of Israel against the people of Palestine."
Friday protests in Zahedan were documented on social media, with slogans expressing opposition to Iran's current policy of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. Participants chanted "Neither Gaza nor Lebanon, My Life for Iran" and "From Zahedan to Gaza, the Whole World Shakes."
Abdolhamid, renowned for his outspoken views, has expressed his criticism of Hamas' declaration of war against Israel on October 7. "We will not blindly support a Muslim who goes too far and ignores international law and attacks women and kills children," he said, going against the regime's rhetoric that Hamas must continue to crush Israel until it no longer exists.
His sermons were seen as an implicit reaction to Iran's Leader Ali Khamenei's lauding Hamas' "epic" attacks on Israel.
The Khamenei-affiliated Kayhan newspaper attacked Abdolhamid, calling him a "Mossad agent".
The secretary general of the party, Sadegh Mahsouli, and the chairman of the party’s central council, Morteza Aghatehrani, have not made any public comments about the war raging in the Middle East. Considering that they are close allies with many top officers of the Revolutionary Guard, the reason for their silence remains a mystery.
The Paydari party has its tentacles in all government institutions including the parliament where their members form a very influential minority that often takes a leading role amid the weak presence of established conservative and reformist parties.
Paydari, which has always expressed maximum hostility towards Israel, however, in a statement earlier this month called the Hamas attack on Israel a “triumphant” operation and congratulated the “Palestinian resistance groups’ command”.
Mahsouli and Aghatehrani’s silence is particularly notable, as many other politicians -- including reformists such as the former President Mohammad Khatami whose rhetoric against Israel is generally very mild in comparison with hardliners -- have extensively condemned Israel in the past two weeks.
Mahsouli, a former Revolutionary Guard officer and a business tycoon who served in the government of the hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as minister of interior and minister of welfare and social security, has been the party’s leader in the past three years.
Many believe Mahsouli, then interior minister, was the man behind the alleged rigging of the 2009 elections which secured a second term for the incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is among the officials of the Islamic Republic designated by the European Union.
Aghatehrani who is the chairman of the parliament’s cultural committee this week spoke to the media about the upcoming elections of the parliament and Assembly of Experts in March.
The Assembly, a constitutional body, is tasked with selecting the Islamic Republic’s next supreme leader. Reformists allege the party is planning to manipulate the assembly’s elections to suit its own interests.
Aghatehrani is known for having been a protégé of Ayatollah Mohhammad-Taqi Mesbah-Yazdi. The sixty-six-year-old cleric studied at Canada’s McGill; a university very popular with Mesbah-Yazdi’s circle in the early 1990s.
Aghatehrani then obtained a US Green Card while studying for a PhD in Middle East Studies at the State University of New York at Binghampton. There, he founded the Islamic Institute of New York and Razi Islamic school in Woodside.
Aghatehrani returned to Iran and to Mesbah-Yazdi’s famous Imam Khomeini Institute, a seminary in Qom, in 2004. A year later when Ahmadinejad was first elected to presidency, Aghatehrani was invited to join his government as the cabinet’s “ethics teacher”.
The party, and Aghatehrani as a lawmaker, are said to be behind a drive to purge government institutions of all rival factions and “Islamization” of the Iranian society including imposing tighter control on universities and other educational institutions, strict enforcement of compulsory hijab, and controlling the media and the cyberspace.
The drive to establish Paydari’s monopoly in the government and higher education came to be known as “the purification project.” Former parliament speaker and moderate conservative Ali Larijani, who among others oppose hardliners and are seen as centrists in Iranian politics, coined the term in May indirectly attacking the Paydari.
Paydari members had circulated a rumor that Larijani was trying to head an electoral block for the March parliamentary elections. “There is no talk about the elections or a nationwide slate, nor is there any consultation with other [political groups]. Therefore, the purification [-seeking] current need not worry,” Larijani responded in a brief letter and added that his ultra-hardliner rivals who blocked him from running in the presidential elections of 2020 could not expect to “create fake rivalry” and interest in the parliamentary elections.
